What? Unless you ignore what I've said in the last 2 pages I don't think the answer is as simple as you say.

I actually think it's very simple. Moving in FG circles, I meet people who say that FG should really do X or that Y would be a good idea on a daily basis. The implied meaning is really always that someone else should do it.

When asked why people don't do X themselves as they think it very important, the answers are always 'I can't code C++', 'I don't understand enough' or 'I'm not really qualified'.

Well, one can learn things... Nobody taught me how to use JSBSim or code GLSL - but I needed the tools to achive a goal, so I learned them. But in fact many things aren't hard to learn (Wiki, xml-configuration of effects,...),. Tagging aircraft is as simple as reading the Wikipedia article on the aircraft and match it with the tag list - in fact, I'm seriously over-qualified for the task, but surprisingly there's hardly anyone else who does it, and while I personally don't use the sorting feature at all, I think it adds a lot to the user experience - so I work on it.

Really all it takes to get the newsletter up to speed is someone who cares about it to take initiative, copy/paste the template and start filling it, and a few invitations in the forum to write something.

You're going to ask me next why I think someone else should do it and don't do it myself. The reason is that I already

* maintain AW * maintain ALS* develop the Space Shuttle* provide the largest share of bug support in this forum* do most of the PR for FG by writing reviews on the project page or articles for flightsim.com* am busy writing documentation for the wiki* am busy continuing tagging of aircraft for better user experience where the maintainers haven't done it yet* am busy adding new-style splash screens to aircraft where the maintainers haven't done it yet(...)

So unless you have a similarly full list of FG-related tasks, I suggest you take me off the list of candidates for yet another job - I'm doing my share of unpleasant work along with what actually interests me already.

Yes, I do think it's very simple: If you care for the newsletter because you found it useful in the past, take charge to revive it. If you do not care for it, don't lament it's passing away.

(Oh, and the typical reward for taking bug reports is being yelled at... I'm still waiting for the 'payment' to make this worth my time...)

Hooray wrote in Sat Jun 24, 2017 5:04 pm:Maybe the whole process needs to be written down, too ? I only just realized that all the behind-the-scenes networking wasn't obvious to people

Abolutely, It would be easier to get into maintaining the newsletter having some roadmap on how to do things.

Thus, maybe it would be a good idea to form some kind of "newsletter team" where people can volunteer by adding their nicknames to a category such as "writing", "artwork", "translating" or "mentoring" ?

A teamwork effort would offload the burden from one person and would be a great opportunity for those with no programming/modeling/art skills to contribute. In general, some sort of structure and coordinated effort for these "PR" parts of the project such as the webpage and any social media would be advisable, maybe the newsletter team could be under that structure then? This works very well in things like VATSIM-Scandinavia.

Exactly, my suggestion would be to start a new topic and look for volunteers interested in helping maintain the wiki newsletter according to what we've discussed here, so that a corresponding wiki article can be created, including a table with volunteers willing to "mentor" newcomers.

As has been said, it makes sense to come up with a team of volunteers so that the whole scheme doesn't simply collapse whenever someone is n/a

I actually think it's very simple. Moving in FG circles, I meet people who say that FG should really do X or that Y would be a good idea on a daily basis. The implied meaning is really always that someone else should do it.

I'm not asking anyone to do X or Y, I'm asking if it would be a good idea to do X or Y. Despite my arguments people answered no, so I gladly step down and let things be as they were or let others implement their own proposals. I don't know whether you are just ranting about this topic or accusing me of anything, but if it's the latter, I'm not the right person to accuse of telling others to do stuff while I limit myself to writing a forum post.

I actually like documenting stuff, maybe Hooray remembers back when I was involved in the FGRadar thing. I like explaining how things work so other people can benefit from them and hopefully reduce the time it takes for themselves to get into topic. In fact, I wouldn't mind adding a section in the ALS technical notes about the volumetric grass stuff, but first I wanted to sort out the newsletter if possible. It didn't work out so yesterday I added a section in the current newsletter.

I suggest you take me off the list of candidates for yet another job

Can you point me to the exact sentence where I told you to do that job?

Yes, I do think it's very simple: If you care for the newsletter because you found it useful in the past, take charge to revive it. If you do not care for it, don't lament it's passing away.

I already took charge. I proposed several ways of fixing the lack of contributors but people disagreed. Of course if people don't want to do things my way, don't expect me to want to do things their way.

(Oh, and the typical reward for taking bug reports is being yelled at... I'm still waiting for the 'payment' to make this worth my time...)

If the bugs are on your own contributions, well, yeah, it's common sense that the maintainer of the code should be the one fixing them. Not everything is black and white as you seem to think...

Please stop taking everything I write as a personal reply to you - the things that refer to what you have written usually are, but the things that refer to things you haven't written are not - they're either to what others have said or speaking in general (the English 'you' is rather deceptive here I fear).

And I will readily admit to some sloppiness in mixing ideas in my replies - sorry about that.

I'm not asking anyone to do X or Y, I'm asking if it would be a good idea to do X or Y.

...and received the answer it might be if you go ahead and do it, it would probably not be if you expect someone else to do it.

Personally, I think your diagnosis of the problem is wrong, but since I don't know that for sure, I'll do my part regardless of the format.

(My diagnosis is very simple - there's as every so often someone missing who takes charge and prods here and here, and so people forget, and since others also forget they don't feel bad about it any more, believing the whole approach is abandoned. Vicious cycle which needs to be turned into a virtuous one.

I don't like the idea of increasing the interval because that feeds the vicious cycle by making it official the whole approach is abandoned and proposes to replace it by something we already have and which works even less well than the newsletter. I like the idea of automated stuff even less because that really distributes the responsibility into the cloud.)

If the bugs are on your own contributions, well, yeah, it's common sense that the maintainer of the code should be the one fixing them.

It's kind of depressing that whatever stuff I do for the community gets flagged as 'well, the maintainer has to fix the bugs' and that whatever I argue here gets designated as 'ranting' , and I realize this discussion takes me to a level that's not good for me (speaking again of 'rewards' in the FG environment).

So I'm out of here. Whoever feels like taking care of the newsletter, I'll continue to write my part as I've done in the past, and if no one cares, then we'll just live without a newsletter.

already took charge. I proposed several ways of fixing the lack of contributors but people disagreed. Of course if people don't want to do things my way, don't expect me to want to do things their way.

I think the point is, the way most FG enthusiast would fix the news letter is to encourage more people to write about their work and submit it. That maybe a longer publication frequency would more than likely mean a bi-annual blank paper instead of a monthly blank paper.

My point is the effort put into trying to fix the lack of contributions filled three pages of forum posts. Longer than any newsletter I remember seeing.

I have been meaning to say for a few weeks now.

I read the dev mailing list regularly and I am amazed at a few "enthusiasts" that continue to work the most mundane issues. I brush over the issues I find too boring, they seem not to.I see other "enthusiasts" working special interests that contribute greatly on their own and even more so in combination with others, I am very appreciative.I see yet other "enthusiasts" that do both and also step up to do things solely because they know that it helps the project not because they want to. I strive to emulate them.

These people are the glue that is keeping this project going. I think of where FG would be if these individuals had never contributed anything or decided to no longer contribute.

It's an ongoing issue in the FG project, "willing human resources".

Last edited by wlbragg on Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

These people are the glue that is keeping this project going. I think of where FG would be if these individuals had never contributed anything or decided to no longer contribute.

It's an ongoing issue in the FG project, "willing human resources".

I guess altruism and sacrifice are a bit too strong words in the context of FlightGear, but then again what would FlightGear be, or any other open source project for that matter, if people only would do things that would benefit themselfes?

Low-level flying — It's all fun and games till someone looses an engine. (Paraphrased from a YouTube video)Improving the Dassault Mirage F1 (Wiki, Forum, GitLab. Work in slow progress)

On main websites menu on subsection "Posts" maybe we can add a link to the actual newsletter as an effort to gain more pageviews. i noted the section "News" appears twice, on "about" and "Posts" sections when there're just articles each 3 months or longer

It's really not that difficult to get the newsletter populated again, all it takes is someone to write a corresponding wiki article and detail all the steps in getting people involved, detailing all the basics and sending that out to recent contributors - originally, I would set up the forum search to view all threads created in the previous 3-4 weeks, as well as look at significant wiki additions, and then bootstrap a few sections using the corresponding wiki/forum contents, while sending out a heads-up to the corresponding contributors to help review/proof-read and improve such additions. Once you start doing that semi-regularly by sending out such notices to 5-10 contributors each month, you will see that roughly 3-5 will begin contributing to the newsletter somewhat regularly, including sometimes even additions to other articles.

I really don't think that this is about accepting or rejecting a certain proposal - all of us should appreciate the fact that efforts that rest on the shoulders of a single individual are unlikely to work out too well given the constraints of this project, so it makes sense to document such processes and get volunteers involved in implementing them, even if that just means sending out a few PMs each month and helping wiki newcomers every once in a while.

Believe me or not, there is tons of useful contents available in the forum/devel list archives, including even screenshots and youtube videos that would make for excellent additions to the newsletter - someone also tracking the commit logs and devel list debates could easily make meaningful additions without having to be intimately familiar with the project or its contributors.